Samuel Morse Quotes

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. (SAMUEL JOHNSON)

Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news?

My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom.

[It would not be long] ere the whole surface of this country would be channelled for those nerves which are to diffuse, with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the whole country.

Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?

The inventor of the telegraph, which has proved so great a blessing to mankind, was Professor Samuel F. B. Morse of Massachusetts. Perhaps no other invention has exercised so beneficent an influence on the welfare of the human race.

Edison’s famous “invention” of the incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21, 1879, improved on many other incandescent light bulbs patented by other inventors between 1841 and 1878. Similarly, the Wright brothers’ manned powered airplane was preceded by the manned unpowered gliders of Otto Lilienthal and the unmanned powered airplane of Samuel Langley; Samuel Morse’s telegraph was preceded by those of Joseph Henry, William Cooke, and Charles Wheatstone; and Eli Whitney’s gin for cleaning short-staple (inland) cotton extended gins that had been cleaning long-staple (Sea Island) cotton for thousands of years.

The next year, Samuel F. B. Morse, a young man of many talents, best known as a painter, published a virulent treatise called Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration, urging the passage of a new immigration law banning all foreign-born Americans from voting.53 Morse then ran for mayor of New York (and lost). Meanwhile, he began devising a secret code of dots and dashes, to be used on the telegraph machine he was designing. He believed there existed a Catholic plot to take over the United States. He believed that, to defeat such a plot, the U.S. government needed a secret cipher. Eventually, he decided that a better use of his

SAMUEL MORSE

Eerily, the awakening occurred eighteen years to the day from Samuel Morse’s “What hath God wrought” message. When Confederate general Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson changed the nature of the war by marching to threaten Washington, Lincoln responded by changing the nature of his leadership.

Change came on May 24, 1844, when Samuel Morse sent four words down a wire: “What hath God wrought?

We have heard the stories: Duke Ellington would say, “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” 5 Tennessee Williams felt that “apparent failure” motivated him. He said it “sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.” Many have heard that Thomas Edison told his assistant, incredulous at the inventor’s perseverance through jillions of aborted attempts to create an incandescent light bulb, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” 6 “Only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one. Many thanks . . .” read part of the rejection letter that Gertrude Stein received from a publisher in 1912.7 Sorting through dross, artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators have learned to transform askew strivings. The telegraph, the device that underlies the communications revolution, was invented by a painter, Samuel F. B. Morse, who turned the stretcher bars from what he felt was a failed picture into the first telegraph device. The 1930s RKO screen-test response “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little” was in reference to Fred Astaire. We hear more stories from commencement speakers—from J. K. Rowling to Steve Jobs to Oprah Winfrey—who move past bromides to tell the audience of the uncommon means through which they came to live to the heights of their capacity. Yet the anecdotes of advantages gleaned from moments of potential failure are often considered cliché or insights applicable to some, not lived out by all.

By the early 1800s, hundreds of simultaneous experiments had emerged, each taking an incremental step forward from previous ones. Many patents were issued, and storage techniques advanced considerably; so did knowledge of wires and conductivity. While the pieces were there, however, no system or technique designed to this point had brought them all together to transmit messages in a repeatable, scalable way. It fell to an American artist of some notable achievement, Samuel Morse, to do what decades of scientists and engineers didn’t or couldn’t. Morse proved that good product design could make technology practical.

De Praagse lente verliep rustig deze Zondag. Goede Vrijdag.

La historia del verdadero inventor del telégrafo   En una entrevista a Samuel Morse, coinventor del telégrafo y del código de señales que lleva su nombre, le preguntaron si alguna vez durante sus experimentos en la universidad se sintió frustrado, perdido o en situaciones sin salida. Morse entonces respondió con un contundente: —Sí. Y al ser interrogado acerca de la solución a estos momentos, él respondió: —Pedí un poco de luz. Y cuando le interrogaron nuevamente acerca de si Dios lo ayudó; él dijo: —Claro que sí, es por esta razón que no me siento digno de los honores que me brindan, pues Dios quería hacer este regalo a la humanidad y estoy agradecido que me haya escogido a mí para realizarlo. Por esa razón, le estoy muy agradecido. Gracias a esta entrevista se comprende claramente el primer mensaje que trasmitió Morse a través del telégrafo: «¡Qué maravilla ha creado Dios!».

It was time for Morse to make his first major demonstration of his invention. All he needed was an inaugural message. Based on a suggestion from the daughter of the patent commissioner who had supported Morse’s innovation, he tapped a well-known phrase from the end of the book of Numbers: WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT? As Winchester notes, these words, when considered in isolation, “formed a simple declarative exclamation, a statement of Samuel Morse’s faith.” But in the context of the transformation this invention and its successors would spark, it was better understood as a “suitably portentous epigraph for an era of change that now commenced with unimagined speed and unimaginable consequences.

Emerson spoke compassionately about fugitive slaves, he also wrote in his journal that “so inferior a race must perish shortly like the Indians,” while Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, put the Negro just above the baboon in the great chain of being. These attitudes were so widespread that in 1842, while touring the United States, the English naturalist Charles Lyell was amazed at “the extent to which the Americans carry their repugnance to all association with the coloured race on equal terms.